The really eye-opening quote is on the second page, where we find this:

Takimoto said Toyota had been approached by both parties as well as many other battery makers, but dismissed their products as "unusable" due to their low energy density.

"Our battery is still superior," he said. He added that plug-in hybrids, which can be recharged through an electric socket, were still years away from practical application and pure electric vehicles even further out because even with a trunk full of rechargeable batteries, they would have a cruising range of just 60 km (37 miles).

Why is it that Toyota, with their "superior" batteries, can only make an electric car go 37 miles, while Tesla are getting over 200 miles out of theirs? And isn't 37 miles range often achieved even by homebrew conversions of gasoline cars using DC motors and common lead-acid batteries?

Would be interesting to see the numbers on how much a car company makes by selling the car, and how much they make selling parts for that car.....Wonder what the ratio is? So for them, ofcourse electric cars are at least 10 years away, they can't sell you 2000 different parts just to keep it running.

... how much a car company makes by selling the car, and how much they make selling parts for that car.....Wonder what the ratio is?

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I think in the movie WKtEC they mention that 40% of the total profit from a car's life cycle comes from parts.

Again, I think that is what was said.

--Update--

Ok, I watched the film again last night* and that 40% number is not in there so I don't know where that came from. The film does mention the brake biz alone is more than a billion dollar industry and the mechanic says thanks to regen braking he never serviced brakes on an EV1.

*I'm off to the ARB meeting tomorrow so I thought it would be good to watch the last time they met in April 2003. The shenanigans they pulled at that meeting are reprehensible! AT this point they are aleady placing full EVs low on the list.

Toyota's goal: to make it difficult for other auto makers to develop their own hybrids without seeking licensing from Toyota, as Ford Motor Co. already did to make its Escape hybrid and Nissan Motor Co. has for its Altima hybrid.

TOKYO — Despite Toyota’s image as the world’s greenest automaker, the company that brought us the Prius — totem of the environmentally conscious — has fallen behind in the race for the all-electric car.

For their sake, I hope the current public stance is due to desire to milk the Prius investment to a maximum.

Toyota would like to profit all it can from the current technology before shifting to a new one, analysts say, especially because the company is facing a second down year after a loss last year of about $4.4 billion.

Toyota may be slow to actually adopt lithium-ion batteries into its cars, but it appears the company may be ahead of the pack when it come to basic scientific development.

A report out of the Nikkei in Japan states that Toyota achieved the ability to fabricate single crystals of cobalt-oxide for use in lithium ion cells.

A lithium-ion battery stores energy by moving charged lithium ions through a matrix consisting of a carbon graphite anode and various different molecular cathodes. In Toyota's case cobalt oxide is the cathode, but in present technology exists as a large crystalline molecular structure.

In the breakthrough, by creating single crystals, much less graphite is needed thereby making room for more energy storing lithium.

Over the next 10 years Toyota engineers hope to completely eliminate the carbon altogether therefore effectively creating a battery that can hold 10 times the energy in the same mass.

...“We’re pacing ourselves in a way that we think that we can be competitive in a few years time for a market that makes sense for both us and the customer.” Jana Hartline, Toyota’s environmental communication manager, added, “Our outlook has never been to be the first to market. We want to be the best to market.”...

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...While GM, Ford, and Nissan—and newcomers like Tesla, Fisker, and Coda—busily generate buzz for their grid-connected vehicles, Toyota has been nearly silent about electric cars...

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...“If we had a technology that was ready today—if we had the battery at a performance and quality and durability and price point that we could put into a car and mass manufacture it for some market and both sustain our business and provide value to the customer—we’d do it,” said {Doug} Coleman. “We’re trying to get to that point in the future.”...

Funny then that Daihatsu, who they own a 51 percet share in is not only planning on making electric cars, but going to Toyota for a little integration knowhow. Notice one of the commenters left links to an electric Copen the company did a year or two ago.

Toyota is knocking plug-in cars at CARB and in the press and touting impossible to deliver near-term hydrogen fuel cell commercialization. But it may have a Plan B. "Toyota Motor Corp is considering working with affiliate Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd to develop its electric vehicles," according to Mainichi newspaper as reported by Reuters.

"Toyota, the world's biggest automaker, is promising an electric vehicle by 2012.
It trails some other automakers, including Japanese rival Nissan Motor Co., which plans to start selling an electric car called Leaf next year.

Yasuo Kajino, a Toyota manager, said the FT-EV II electric vehicle, a concept model to be unveiled at the Tokyo show, isn't the 2012 model and won't be available for consumers for some years after that.

Toyota has led the world in hybrids with the Prius, now in its third-generation since its 1997 debut. The Prius is the top-selling gas-electric hybrid, racking up more than 1.4 million vehicles in global sales so far.

The automaker has long said it believes hybrids are a more practical green car solution because of costs and the lack of recharging stations for electric cars. But it has always had electric car technology. Hybrids are part electric vehicles.

Toyota has leased in small numbers to rental customers an electric version of the RAV-4 sport utility vehicle in the U.S. since 1997. It became available to regular consumers in 2003. Production was discontinued that same year, partly because only about 300 were sold.